Delivered by Rev. Ellen Brantley

Sunday, February 17

SERMON: The Answer is Love

TEXT: John 3:1-17

In my early years of ministry I had a friend who asked me if I had a “God is love” sermon. She had a brother who was a pastor, and she believed that every good pastor ought to have a fallback sermon – something you can pull out whenever you’ve had four funerals and a wedding in one week, or if you were sick Monday through Saturday but were well enough to preach on Sunday, or whenever you simply couldn’t think of anything else to say. “God is love”, she thought was a timeless message that would be well-received with any congregation and at any season of the year. She had a good idea, but I always laughed it off as though it was a joke.

Then there was a guy I dated for a short time, who wasn’t much for going to church or studying the Bible. One evening after seeing a thought-provoking movie, we got into a serious theological discussion and he tried to summarize the point I was trying to make: “So you’re saying that God is love?” Well, actually I was trying to say a lot more than that, and I was a little annoyed that that’s all he got out of it. That answer was just too simplistic – even trite – and I couldn’t believe he reduced my great philosophizing down to such minimalist terms.

As I paraphrase today’s passage from the gospel of John, notice that Jesus gets into a serious theological discussion with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a proud man, a leader of the Jews, but he found himself curious about this man named Jesus. Not wanting to let it be known that he’s curious, he comes to Jesus in the dark of night. He starts by asking a seemingly simple question: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” He might have made it even simpler by asking, “Are you or are you not the Son of God?”

Jesus, as usual, does not give a simple “yes or no” answer, but says, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus is understandably confused by this. “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus continues to muddy the waters, saying, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Born of the Spirit, born anew, born again, born from above – yes, it’s confusing alright. But I think Jesus is saying that there is another way of looking at life besides the physical, the flesh. And there are ways of knowing without having to see a sign. What Jesus is about goes beyond what can be seen in the signs and the miracles he’s performed. In the same way that the wind exists, but you can’t see it, there’s more to life and faith than what can be seen. We have to believe that the wind exists, because we see the results of it.

If you’re forty or older, you might remember the song, “The Answer is Blowin’ in the Wind.” I remember (as a very young child!) singing this song at the contemporary worship service of the Catholic Church we attended at the time. It was during the late sixties that people were asking those deep questions of life and faith, like the ones raised in the song. “How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man? And how many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand? And how many times must the cannonballs fly, before they’re forever banned?” Sing it with me, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

The answers are out there, but they’re in the wind of the Spirit, and sometimes we need to believe before we can see.

Finally, Jesus explains to Nicodemus about the Son of Man, that he must be lifted up, “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” And then we hear some words we can understand because we’ve heard them so many times before: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

I wonder if Nicodemus understood that the “Son of Man” was Jesus himself. I wonder if he heard the emphasis on believing rather than seeing. I wonder if he sensed that love – not condemnation – was the whole point of Jesus life, death, and resurrection.

Even after studying this passage, I still have a lot of questions that remain unanswered, and I imagine you do, too. The answer is still out there, blowin’ in the wind.

But if we were to give this passage a “bottom line” what would it be, or what should it be? Some would say it’s the idea of being “born again.” Some would emphasize that “whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” For me, I guess the bottom line is that “God so loved the world;” that “God did NOT send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The apostle Paul echoed this sentiment when he wrote, “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

I think that a person becomes born again once they realize how much God loves them personally. I think that life “in the Spirit” is about learning how to return God’s love and how to love one another despite the trials and obstacles of this earthly life. And I believe that the only way we’re going to see the evidence of God’s love is by believing in it even when we don’t see it. Amongst all of our unanswered questions, there’s one answer we do have: THE ANSWER IS LOVE.

Have I simplified it too much? Maybe so. But on the other hand, sometimes we make things more complicated than they need to be. We’re reminded of this whenever we read that passage from Robert Fulghum’s “All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”: “Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some…. Think of what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is better to hold hands and stick together.”

Is this my “God is love” sermon? Maybe it is now. And that guy I dated years ago? Maybe I didn’t give him enough credit.

For God so loved the world. AMEN.